Question

I am trying to read the content of a PHP / HTML file on a remote web server using C++, but haven’t found a way to do it. I want to pass GET statements to it, so http://example.com/login.php?user=abc&password=def.
How would I do it?

Answer 1

Your best bet is to use an external library. libcurl is popular and fairly easy to use.

Here’s a simple example, you need to add error checking though:

string data;
CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, url_.c_str());
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, &data);
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, curlWrite);
curl_easy_perform(curl);

Your callback would look something like this:

size_t curlWrite(void *ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, void *usrPtr)
{
    size_t bytes = size * nmemb;
    string *data = static_cast<string *>(usrPtr);
    data->append(static_cast<const char *>(ptr), bytes);
    return bytes;
}

You can add your GET parameters on the end of the URL.